Ulthwé Craftworld v4.2 *revitalized*

Just to correct you Graf_Spee, not all the eldar list have three troupe choices, only the beil-tan has. The Siam-hann and Iyanden have two troupe choices..Yme-loc only has two too....The big difference is that you only have one war host..

look forward to the battle-reports...

_________________RegardsGreg

*************************************************

Not against change, so long as it done fairly and no one is left behind....

I also sympathise with the desire to boost the BGWH. However, giving them 1+ initiative with the current Farsight rule is OTT because it means an undamaged BGWH will retain on a 1+. This is significantly better than any other unit in the whole of E:A (with the notable exception of the Warlock titan). Even titans and Aspects only retain on a 2+, while the majority of Eldar formations need a 3+ which balances out the benefit of the Eldar double retain. Unfortunately, the current approach to this conundrum does not completely resolve this particular issue.

Removing Farsight from the BGWH would help as it would return the balance of the game allowing some chance for a retain to fail. Unfortunately that also removes the iconic Eldar double retain. What we need is some form of hybrid solution that gives a 1+ initiative without a 1+ retain, whilst retaining Farsight to enable the Eldar triple retain.

Spitballing here, as this may not be palatable to others, but we could consider amending the Eldar Farsight rule. Call it something like "the Ulthwe Farsight rule" and reword it to remove the -1 for retaining. For example:-

Quote:

Eldar Farseers are able to partially unravel the threads of time, allowing them to foresee events that may affect his army, and act to counter them.

Once per turn the Ulthwe player may attempt to retain the initiative twice in a row (i.e. the Ulthwe player can retain the initiative and take another action after having successfully retained the initiative once already). Any Ulthwe formation may be chosen, including those that do not include a unit with Farsight, but at least one unit with Farsight must still be in play and on the battlefield. The formation must still pass an initiative test in order to carry out the action. Once the action has been taken the initiative returns to the opposing player.

Note, this approach would also make the Warlock slightly less powerfull as it would remove the auto retain from that monster, though I am sure that would not displease everyone . . . .

There's a few different ways you could achieve a similar thing but they all involve messing around with special rules which is less than ideal. I think modifying the actual Farsight rule is likely to be a stumbling block for many, especially if it (on the face of it) is to make it worse.

Some examples of other possibilities that occurred to me:1. Don't change the Farsight rule, but add an Ulthwe special rule that says if a formation has two farseers it also gets a +1 to activate when not retaining. Has the benefit that it doesn't work if a farseer dies. Unfortunately the way Farsight is currently worded makes it more complex than it needs to be.2. As above, but the second farseer allows to ignore the -1 for having blast markers. This means they always activate on a 2+ even when retaining with BMs, but they also never automatically activate. Makes guardians even better at what they are already good at. Is much neater in terms of wording and a natural companion for Farsight, but not as good at representing the actual ability IMO.

I would like to hear the suggestion that doesn't involve special rules though.

I dunno, if we assume that Ulthwe Black Guardian/farseer formation include more Warlocks by default, then you can always have it represent the 'Embolden' power. Perhaps even let them ignore the -1 for blast marker penalties in assaults too, gives Black Guardians a unique and potentially quite powerful boost to their resilience, but they can lose the 1+ activations without being considered useless.

I dunno, if we assume that Ulthwe Black Guardian/farseer formation include more Warlocks by default, then you can always have it represent the 'Embolden' power. Perhaps even let them ignore the -1 for blast marker penalties in assaults too, gives Black Guardians a unique and potentially quite powerful boost to their resilience, but they can lose the 1+ activations without being considered useless.

Interesting idea...

enjoyed the Battle report to Graf_Spee....good to see you get a game in and looking forward to the next one..keep them coming..

_________________RegardsGreg

*************************************************

Not against change, so long as it done fairly and no one is left behind....

Thanks for the report. Things certainly didn't go the Eldar way. I would also say that any game verses 1/3 aircraft is going to be difficult. I have played against massed F-B's, SM Air Assaults and tested massed Sauteck aircraft and the results are generally the same. Ground AA overwhelmed and the game lost.

Seems some of my dice may have found their way over to your pot. I suggest giving them away to your opponent

you need to know that he is really allergic and superstitious when it comes to his dice. no one touches them, let alone plays with them, nor will he submit to use the same set of dice that the opponent uses i think at some point when he got some dice tattoed on his arm he went the nutty way. oh, he will punish me for that one i think

but yeah.. the air power somehow killed the game for eldar. there was not really something i could do. and his rolls were also very good. but it is a game.. so.. let's roll again..

well.. actually i really like kyrts idea and doomkittens "embolden" contribution to it. it was something that i introduced as a bonus in a campaign for battle hardened commanders. so the formation would ignore bm for activation pupose. works really nice. could also be used for rally rolls as it basically mirrors the same resolve. i dunno if it would be suitable to ibe ignored in assaults also. it would be a tad ott to assume no blastmarkers when the formation actually has 4 or 5. and again it would be a special rule again. but lets play around that idea a bit more.

and as ginger proposes BGWH should somehow be boosted. in my small world what the aspect host are for Biel Tan, guardians should be for Ulthwe. still they need to be a bit more sexy as vanilla guardians to make them atractive to use.so in this regard in the last game saukopfblende , my opponent, came up with an idea that would not involve a special rule and could work with ini 2+. so basically to make them a viable unit and in order to keep the fluff somehow represented just give an option to increase the basic size of the formation. so we know ulthwe makes extensive use of guardians and utilizes them in very flexible ways.. well that could mean for me that you could either field them as the common small formations but in high numbers or bring them into action with less but bigger formations to be able to stand on their own in a bigger scale engagement. so for example giving the option of lets say buy an upgrade of 3 additional guardians + a farseer as leader (so exactly a third of the original size again for lets say 75pts) and allow 1 additonal guardian be replaced by a heavy plattform it would make for a comparably "sturdy" formation. as far as this term can go with eldar. it would take longer to break, has the obvious benefits in assaults by attack dice and number resolution, can shoot a tad better if there is need and would generally be a formation that you could use maybe more than once per game cause it simply stays longer. so basically an upped form of guardians representing the heavy use but at the same time flexibility of the ulthwe guardian approach. if this option is used i would restrict wraithguard and wraithlord support to max 2. units, though. it would create a too much oversized formation otherwise and would cause trouble in conjunction with storm serpent actions. i would try them at ini 2+ but would reduce the basic formation cost to 150pts as per normal guardian host (although there is an extra farseer replacing one guardian. yep.. ulthwe needs a very small benefit). the formation + upgrade would be at 225pts then. still well beneath biel tan aspect cost but for sure they would not perform as well yet, so kind of justified then. and you could have a mix of upgraded and normal sized formations, having quite a few guardians on the field and still boast a good activation count. strategy i would set to 5+ in this case to compensate for the 2+ ini. as a downpoint these upgraded guardians would be very expensive to transport in an other way than by storm serpent. oh and.. last but not least it would make for a very distinctive BGWH imho.

I've been going back through a filing cabinet full of old play test lists that date back way before even Swordwind was published helping PFE with a few odd things. Very early in the piece, the BT list had the following two formations -

ELDAR GUARDIAN WARHOST - 125 points

An Eldar Guardian Warhost consists of nine Guardian units. Three Guardian units may be replaced with three Heavy Weapon Platforms for +50 points. Up to one Guardian unit may include a Farseer character upgrade for +25 points.

The Warhost may include three War Walkers for +100 points, and/or three Support Weapon Platforms for +75 points.

The Warhost may be mounted in three Falcons and three Wave Serpents for +325 points. Any Wave Serpent may be replaced with two Falcons for +50 points for each pair of Falcons taken.

ELDAR GUARDIAN STORM TROUPE - 100 points

And Eldar Storm Troupe consists of six Guardian units. Three Guardian units may be replaced with three Heavy Weapon Platforms for +50 points.

The Troupe may be mounted in three Wave Serpents for +175 points.

Army list layout was out a lot differently back then (in paragraphs rather then tables). Units had slightly different stats then (Oddly, Guardians, Heavy Weapon Platforms and Support Weapon Platforms haven't changed at all!) and Farseers were characters, not units. There was no Wraithguard or Wraithlords in the Guardian formation because you could also take A Spirit Warrior Troupe (three Wraithguard plus three Wraithlords or Wave Serpents for 225 points).

Not suggesting this as a solution or the points are relevant anymore, just some food for thought of different ways to build a Guardian formation. I just thought it kinda fits in with what your looking for - a choice of large Guardian Formations or small Guardian Formations. Hope this is helpful.

and so long as the price is right and maybe give a upgrade option of W/S or Falcons then they should be OK..I would expect that the Aspect troupe may become surplus. I wonder if there's room to add the Storm Troupe as a Warhost..Yes it would mean jigging around with formation size and points again and upgrades..It just thought..

_________________RegardsGreg

*************************************************

Not against change, so long as it done fairly and no one is left behind....

I´m the guy Graf Spee played against. The one that´s allergic and superstitiuos about his dice. (Yes, Spee, you will suffer for this.)

It was a hard fought pair of battles and I enjoyed it very much.When I played Ulthwe in the return game, the one thing that stood out, was the difficulty for me to get something useful out of the Guardian formation after their initial delivery and action.The two problems in my opinion are their resilience and slowness.So upping the number of stands in the formation could work, or a more heretical suggestion coul be, letting the BGWH garrison.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum